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Share in the accounts and discoveries of the many individuals who, just like you, set out to find new, true answers that could stand up to the test of passing time with its ever-changing conditions. Welcome these inward and uplifting thoughts as if they were your own, for in one sense… they are.
There is a force within that gives you life — seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel — seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and Seek That.
He who is firm in will moulds the world to himself.
There are, by the direction of the Lawgiver, certain good and substantial steps, placed even through the very midst of this Slough… these steps are hardly seen… notwithstanding, the steps be there; but the ground is good when they are once got in at the Gate.
To see small beginnings is clearness of sight.
It is wretched business to be digging a well just as thirst is conquering you.
No announcements tell the world that he has come into enlightenment. No heralds blow the trumpets proclaiming man’s greatest victory — over himself. This is in fact the quietest moment of his whole life.
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
Along the way to knowledge, many things are accumulated. Along the way to wisdom, many things are discarded.
This great, good light and comfort is inwardly revealed only to those who are… inwardly illuminated, and who know how to dwell inwardly with themselves.
Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present, and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
Man need not perform any acts or exploits, but has only to make an intense effort at consciousness.
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
Despair is the greatest of our errors.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
Watchfulness is the path of immortality; unwatchfulness is the path of death. Those who are watchful never die; those who do not watch are already as dead.
When he tries to extend his power over objects
Those objects gain control of him.
He who is controlled by objects
Loses possession of his inner self.
If he no longer values himself,
How can he value others?
If he no longer values others,
He is abandoned.
He has nothing left.
Your friends will tell you that they are sincere; your enemies are really so. Let your enemies’ criticism be like a bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge.
You have no freedom or power of will to assume any holy temper, or take hold of such degrees of goodness, as you have a mind to have… But you have a true and full freedom of will and choice… to leave and give up your helpless self to the operation of God on your soul. This is the truth of the freedom of your will.
What we do during our working hours determines what we have. What we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.
Everyone, and especially the young, should understand that to devote your lives, or even to occupy yourselves with arranging by violence the lives of others according to your own ideas, is not only a crude superstition, but is an evil, criminal business, pernicious to the soul. Understand that the desire of an enlightened human soul for the good of others, is not satisfied by the vanity of organizing their lives by means of violence, but only by that inner labor with one’s own self, wherein alone a man is free and powerful. Only that work which increases love within one, can satisfy this desire. Understand that all activity directed to organizing the life of others by violence, cannot serve the welfare of mankind, but is always more or less consciously a hypocritical deception, hiding low passions — ambition, pride or cupidity — under the mask of service to man. Understand it, especially you, the young generation of the future, and leave off doing what most of you now are doing — cease to seek for imaginary happiness in shaping the welfare of the people by means of participation in Government, in Law Courts, by teaching other people, and (in order to do that) by entering institutions that — by accustoming you to idleness, conceit and pride — deprave you, namely, all sorts of Grammar Schools and Universities.
But I remember now
I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly.
Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them.
Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.
It is the abuse of our faculties which make us wicked and miserable. Our cares, our anxieties, our griefs, are all owing to ourselves… If we could be contented with being what we are, we should have no inducement to lament our fate; but we inflict on ourselves a thousand real evils in seeking after an imaginary happiness.
